Snow Globes
by miss selah
Summary: He didn’t actually need anything. But everything he wanted was imbodied in a dying dream, wrapped in a thin sheet of glass and covered in styrofoam. [Mohinder x Sylar]


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_**S N O W G L O B E S**_

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Sylar waited by the phone, tapping his foot rhythmatically. Not quickly enough to be called nervous, but slowly and steadily, tapping in time with the clock that he took from his mother's home, because it reminds him of his father and how his father didn't think that he had to be anything but a watchmaker, just like him.

Mohinder would call him back. He had been carefully careless, accidentally on purpose forgetting to dial star sixty seven before he called. He was tired of hiding and waiting and trying to be Gabriel, because it's better than Zane and _way _better than Sylar, but he can't because all he really wants to be is _his. _

He will wait a little longer though, because in just a second, just one more second, Mohinder is going to call and he's gonna to pretend he's shocked if only he can hear his voice for just one more second.

Tiny naunces were always Gabriel's specialty. In a way, they became Sylar's too. Nuances of voice, actions, laughs smiles frowns harder harder harder. He remembered Mohinder for who he was, not for the person that Mohinder presented the world. Mohinder was trying to be a scientist, trying to change the world, but really, underneath it all, Mohinder was just a sad little taxi driver who wanted to see his father one last time.

The phone rings, and Sylar nearly falls over reaching for it. He stops, his hand hovering above the cradle, waiting for one two three rings, before he picks it up, heart pounding, with a sure 'hello,' even though he wishes to say 'Mohinder?'

"Yes, is this the transit station?"

Sylar lets out a shaky laugh and runs a sweaty palm through his well combed hair. It jostles it, and he is loosing control of Gabriel and becoming Sylar again. "Sorry. Try three two one, not three one two."

"Thanks."

He puts the phone back in the cradle, and sighs.

His mother's body is still there, lying in the center of the room and the center of his painting, and he knows the future, even if he doesn't like it. There is nothing left of Gabriel's mother in her cold, dead eyes. This is a woman who had to face Sylar, and like nearly everyone else, she didn't live to tell the tale.

Rigamortis had set in hours ago, and he forced himself to look away from his mother's stiff limbs, forced himself to focus on something besides the phone that wouldn't ring and the mother that wouldn't breath.

Snow globes were all around the room, all still and dead, just like she was still and dead, just like the phone was still and dead. Because he can't stand it anymore, he covers his eyes with one hand and with the other, like the master puppeteer he is, makes them dance for him.

The room is full of snow globes, of places his mother had never been but never stopped wishing. If she had been the one who gathered them, if she had picked each one of them out, she would have had visited forty nine states and ten countries.

She hadn't, though.

She had kept her hopes and dreams and love buried deep inside of her, saving it until she was old and withered and couldn't do anything anymore anyway. She had had her son gather them, and he could imagine that she had sat in the room, her snow globes singing and dancing for her, and imagined that she was there.

All her hopes were embodied in a sheet of glasses and styrofoam. Not completely unlike his. He was waiting and wishing a dreaming for just one more call, one more chance. But then, he would always want _just one more. _

The phone rang a second time for the first time, second, third, and Sylar picked it up with a bit of crushed enthusiasm.

"Sylar?"

Sylar froze, nearly dropping the phone as he simultaneously cradled it to his chest, letting out a sigh of relief.

"Where are you?" Mohinder's voice was not condemning as it would have been if he had really been out to change the world by defeating a serial killer – it was worried for the man that had called him and asked him for help. Only this time, there was no dialing in the back ground, nothing but the sound of Mohinder's heart ticking too quickly.

"I'm. . . at my mother's house." Sylar admitted, because it would have been impossible to not. He tried not to cry, but at least he didn't sob. "She's dead."

"Are you alright?" No accusations, no fervored dialing. Just worry worry worry.

For him. Sylar.

"No." He sobbed a bit here, and rubbed his brow to try to stop the headache that was beginning.

"Do you want me to come to you?"

_Yes. _Sylar wanted to say it. He wasn't sure why he didn't. He wasn't a selfless man, and he didn't take other opinions to heart. He didn't care about others, and he didn't want them to care about him. He took what he wanted, when he wanted, and no one could stop him.

"No."

There was a rustle of fabric on wood – _was Mohinder putting a coat on a rack, or taking it off? – _and a click of shoes. Quiet, so quiet he almost missed it, Mohinder sighed. "Then will you come home?"

Sylar was selfish. He was.

Which didn't explain why he hung up the phone.

Sobbing in to cupped hands that were used to taking things apart, piece by piece, he wished he knew how to comfort himself. Wished that Mohinder was there to do it for him.

But mostly, he wished he could live outside his snowglobe.


End file.
